Free Finding Fate by Ariel Ellens

single customer has come to bakery while I had it closed.  Maybe Colt is right... maybe there’s just so much that needs to change...
    I check my phone every couple minutes, wishing he’d text me, but he doesn’t. 
    When it comes time to close, I do so in a hurry, wanting to get it all over with.  Half the battle is now done, the other half needing to see my mother.
    There’s a piece of me that still acts like a child.  A piece that believes happiness can and will exist for everyone.  A piece that believes bad days come and go with no worries and with nothing remaining.  What that means is I expect to find my mother happy, alert, and sober.  Just like I did the other day.
    I know better, but as I park in front of the old house and I open the old door to the house, the childish piece of me wants to believe it.
    The first thing I notice is the house stinks of cigarettes. 
    I make fists.
    My mother better watch herself today.  I’m not the usual mood right now, thanks to Colt.  His unwillingness to touch leaves me burning, looking for anyway to release my frustrations at life. 
    “Mom?” I yell.
    I hear nothing in return but the sound of something clanking together.  I rush towards the kitchen, the first thing I do it look at the floor to see if it’s clean.  It’s not.  Why would it be?
    I turn and see my mother standing at the stove, holding a pan in each hand, picking them up, and slamming them down to the burners.
    “Mom?” I try again.
    This time her head whips around. 
    She doesn’t need to speak to tell me it’s not the day I had hoped for.
    “Isabella!  You’re here...”
    “Of course I am,” I say. 
    I walk towards the oven and see the kitchen window above the sink open.  On the ledge rests an ashtray with a lit cigarette.  Most of the smoke is going out of the kitchen window but there’s plenty lingering. 
    “You shouldn’t be...”
    “Don’t tell me what I shouldn’t do,” my mother snaps. 
    I freeze in place and look to the pans.  The one in her right has something small and charred in it.  The other is empty but smoke is rising of it from the intense heat.  I catch the subtle hint of oil burning and something really nasty and burnt. 
    “What are you cooking?” I ask.
    She looks at the pans and drops them for good.  Her hands reach for the knobs to turn the burners off.  She turns around and points a yellow stained tip finger at me.
    “You made me burn my fucking dinner.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You should be.  My pork chops, ruined.”
    “They were burnt before I got here.”
    “Don’t tell me a thing,” she growls at me.  “How was your day?”
    My mother never asks me that.  She never cares to know about my day or any other detail of my life unless it involves knowing how much money is in the cash register at the bakery. 
    I don’t answer the question, my eyes on the search.
    “Oh, don’t play your mystery finding game with me,” she says.
    She opens the cabinet next to her head and pulls out the bottle.  The label is mostly peeled off, typical, but today the liquid is clear.  That’s a change, but not a good one at all. 
    “Here, watch,” she says and twists the lid off.  It hits the counter and then falls to the floor where it almost sticks thanks to the filth.  She takes a big swig of the drink and then smacks her lips together.
    “I’m going home,” I say.  “I just wanted to see if you were having a good day... like the other day...”
    “Oh, because I wasn’t drinking?”
    I don’t answer that question.  It’s obvious.
    “It’s not the drinking that separates us, Isabella, okay?”
    “Goodbye,” I say and turn. 
    I can’t view this anymore.  Not after the afternoon I had with Colt.  More than ever I want to be on the back of his bike and just leave the world.  Forever. 
    When I get to the entrance to the kitchen, my mother calls my name.  She yells Isabella in such a sweet, innocent way, it hurts more than the